Color Blog

1. Different colors have different affects on every one's emotions depending on who they are and how easily their mood can be influenced by what they see.  However, there are some colors that have been proven to have a similar affect on a great amount of people.  Blue, which is a cool color, is calm and tranquil and seems to put people at ease. Red on the other hand is a warm color, and is usually used to depict horror, or anguish, but it is also known to stimulate the appetite and increase people's desires to eat. Bubble gum pink is also known as passive pink, and complementary colors such as red and green share different associations across different cultures. In America those two colors are associated with Christmas, but in a Van Gogh painting they were used to make people feel as if they wanted to commit a crime.

2.One theoretical aspect of art and color that fascinates me is how people are drawn to certain colors but then not to other colors.  It is interesting to see the psychological and physiological responses that people have to certain colors, such as blue lowers blood pressure and when people were asked to eat mashed potatoes that were dyed green they had no idea what they were eating. The colors of things changes our opinion so much that it can even distort a food that the majority of Americans eat all the time and would immediately know what it was.

3.In the Color video what had the biggest impact on me was the fact that colors are so unpredictable with emotions and we never know how someone is going to feel when they look at something.  Color is unique to every individual and as June Redfern said "color is a very physiological thing, it has lots of meanings and symbols and ideas behind it but I think at the end of the day, it is how you feel."  This means that while there can be studies done and predictions as to how people are going to feel when looking at certain colors, there is no true universal set of feelings.

4. What had the biggest impact on me in the Feelings video was the Mona Lisa painting. The fact that a single work of art that was created hundreds of years ago is recognized is virtually every culture is remarkable. What I also like is the fact that the Mona Lisa is not beautiful by today's standards.  She is not recognized for her beauty but for her smile, and the way the colors used place emphasis on her smile is what makes the painting so unique and memorable.